Labels

Monday, 28 November 2011

'The Dark Knight Rises' - 5 Interesting Updates

I promised that for the movies in the Constellation of Cinematic Anticipation, I would try to provide relatively comprehensive coverage. However, when it comes to TDKR, comprehensive coverage is no easy task. Stuff gets posted on an almost daily basis. With that in mind, hit the jump for my top 5 bits of TDKR from the last week or three. WARNING, some of the information could be considered a little spoilerish...

1. Pictures in Empire Magazine

The December issue of Empire Magazine has a massive feature on the TDKR. Of course, with a massive feature comes new official pictures. These look terrific. Bane looks horrible. What is wrong with his skin? Damn!

2. Prologue and Trailer

Christopher Nolan (in his Empire Interview) had this to say about the 6-minute prologue which will be attached to some IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol:

"The Prologue is basically the first six, seven minutes of the film. It’s the introduction to Bane and a taste of the rest of the film. With Bane we are looking to give Batman a physical challenge that he hasn’t had before. In terms of finishing our story and increasing its scope, we were trying to craft an epic."

Even better news, there are strong indications that the full trailer for TDKR will be attached to Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows when it releases on 16 December (via Collider).

3. Tom Hardy on Bane

I just love this description:

“He’s brutal, brutal. He’s expedient delivery of brutality. And you know, he’s a big dude. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and orientated fighting style. The result is clear. “Do you know what I mean? It’s: f**k off and die. Quicker. Quicker. Everything is thought out way before. He’s hit you, he’s already hit somebody else. It’s not about fighting. It’s just about carnage with Bane. He’s a smashing machine. He’s a wrecking ball. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. It’s anything he can get away with. He is a terrorist in his mentality as well as brutal action. So he’s horrible. A really horrible piece of work.”

4. 8 Years Later

TDKR is set a full 8 years after TDK. Nolan said:

"It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he’s an older Bruce Wayne; he’s not in a great state."

5. Don't Occupy Wall Street

Finally, Matthew Modine explained to IndieWire why the decision was made not to film on Occupy Wall Street after all:

“The wisdom of Christopher Nolan and his incredible team was that, while it seemed like a good idea to give [the protestors] an opportunity for work, to give them money, it would send a terrible message. At the end of the day, we’re making a movie. What’s happening down there is more important than that. To co-opt what’s happening there and around the country… we didn’t want to trivialize it. It was more important to respect what they’re doing than to do anything that could potentially trivialize the political situation downtown.”

P.S...

And for now, that's it. Apart from one last thing. In that same Empire piece, costume designer Lindy Hemming said this about Bane's mask:

"He was injured early in his story. He’s suffering from pain and he needs gas to survive. He cannot survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jaw line and feed into the thing at the back where there are two canisters of what ever it is…the anesthetic."

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but don't those canisters contain "venom", the stuff that makes Bane super huge? Like horse steroids or something? If it's anaesthetic, then it will only numb pain and presumably Bane will not become huge in TDKR. This disappoints me slightly, even though it probably ties in better with the ultra-realism Nolan normally goes for. Still, I want to see Tom Hardy getting crazeeee when the Venom is pumped. Ah well, in Nolan I trust.